This is How They Brew

Last Saturday we hung out in Soulard while John and Troy brewed. For the past year or so they've been brewing in a 10-gallon pot, which means they have to brew outside as their stove can't handle that kind of weight. Behind their beer mascot (aka Sirius) is the propane powered burner.

Here's a closer look. They store all of these parts in their basement and bring them out on brew days. The kettle sits on top, which you'll soon see.

Upstairs in their apartment they make a beer "tea" (called the "mash") by soaking the grain in water in that bright orange cooler. The grain has to soak in water for about an hour. Then they carry this heavy container downstairs for boiling.

This is the mash up close. Next up is to drain the mash from the cooler using a hose (and leaving behind the spent grain) and boil it.

They put the mash in this kettle and Troy stands there while it boils it for about 90 minutes. (I'm just kidding; she doesn't stand there the whole time.) Once it's boiling it's called the "wort."

Toward the end John added hops. Then it boils over. But it's not supposed to. It just did this time. (Maybe I wasn't supposed to mention that, but I can't exactly take it back now.)

Then it rains. But that's what umbrellas are for. Once the boiling is done the unfermented beer has to cool quickly (to avoid contamination) before it can be moved out of the kettle. So John put in this wound copper tubing that looked like a snake. He ran hose and ice water through the copper and pretty quickly the beer cooled.

Next step is they fill the two clear containers (called "carboys"), which the beer will ferment in. They do this through a hose system.

These are the carboys almost filled. That foam up top is the remains of the sanitizing solution, which pretty much just puffs out the top. What's left gets subsumed into the beer.

Then the beer is ready to go upstairs and into the fermenters (which are old dorm refrigerators). But first they oxygenate the beer and add the yeast. The yeast eats the sugars in the unfermented beer, creating the alcohol. In a few weeks it'll be fermented and ready for drinking!

In case you're wondering, these are going to be two slightly different Witte beers. They'll be different because after fermentation, they'll add some more hops to each (called "dry hopping") but they plan to dry hop them differently.  Then once the beer is ready they'll put each one in a keg, hook the kegs up to one of these taps, and have two new beers at the ready—and if my math is correct the beers they brewed last weekend will be ready for when Peter and Jessa visit! (Thanks to John and Troy for their fact-checking assistance!)

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